Here in Australia, Winter officially begins today: the first day of June.  How quickly Autumn flew by! As a Canadian I’ll admit that Winter in Melbourne is no big deal for me, meaning that the chilly breezes and rainy days don’t bother me all that much.  For those reading along in the Northern hemisphere, a rather nasty winter day in Melbourne might mean temperatures around the 10 degree mark.  I can hear you snorting in laughter at our “winter” from across the globe.  In any event, I can’t say that I miss those -25 degree days back in Toronto, although the snow would be a nice touch for my Aussie kids who haven’t ever seen the white stuff in person.  We will remedy that once they are a bit older. 🙂 I’ve left it a bit late, but I figured I would share with you a few of the Autumn crafts we got up to over the past few weeks.  If you were so inclined, with some minor tweaking, these projects can easily we adapted to any season.

Leaf Rubbings

We made these two leaf rubbings after the postie brought us our brand new Stockmar Beeswax block crayons bought online through Winterwood Steiner Inspired Toys.  Though you could use any crayons turned on their side to achieve the same result, the Stockmar colours are really exquisite in a way I have not seen in good ol’ Crayola.  Stockmar products are often used in Steiner Schools and come highly recommended on the Steiner scene, where there is a belief that a child should be given access to the best creative materials one can afford, as there is no higher period of creativity in life than when one is a child.  When put this way, my former attitude of giving children “cheap” materials for crafting and saving the good quality materials for when they are older suddenly didn’t seem to make much sense anymore.

During one of our morning walks, Master C and I selected a few choice leaves that had began their decent from their mother tree as Autumn crept forward. We brought them home and I placed the leaves between two folded pieces of regular office printer paper.  I used masking tape to secure all edges to the kids’ table (to prevent the paper from bending or tearing, making it easier for Master C), and we each chose a colour to use to reveal which leaf was hidden inside each piece of paper. We used a few other colours to bring a bit of depth to each piece and voila!  Once finished, we hung our artwork on the family Art Gallery, and later on each of these were glued to card stock and made into cards that we sent off to two loved ones respectively for Lovingkindness Day.

Can you guess which piece was Master C’s and which one was mine? (HINT: his looks better than mine!!)

Tissue Paper Trees

These were fun and easy – again using the Stockmar beeswax crayons for the background design, and then just attaching both tissue paper and cellophane paper in red, orange and yellow as autumn leaves. Master C loves wielding the glue stick so this was a good one for him.  We made this craft after another nature walk, pointing out that many trees are losing their leaves, and those that remain are now a different colour than before.

Autumn Leaf Crown

We threw this one together after cutting out far too many leaves in Autumn colours as ground cover for our Autumn Nature Table.  We used some that remained to create an Autumn crown, turning Master C into the Autumn King. 🙂  We used card stock in red, orange, yellow, brown, deep green and garden green to create these, then simply attached with looped tape.  Nothing fancy here. Master C helped cut out some “leaves” of his own with his kid’s scissors, which we attached to another crown not pictured.  His efforts were a tad more abstract than the leaves pictured here, as you can imagine. He helped create this particular crown by attaching tape to each leaf and placing the leaves on the frame of the crown.

Thanks for stopping by to see what we have been up to.  Give us a few weeks and I will have some winter crafts to share. (This week we are making tin lanterns for Winter Festival!)

Stay warm out there!

xx Robyn